“Unless you’re planning to have a whiskey first to bolster your nerves?” The words slipped from his mouth before he’d time to rethink the wisdom of engaging wits with her.
Gobshite—what the hell was wrong with him today? For the past four years since he’d accepted the position of general practitioner on Stewart Island, he’d never had a run-in with MacKenna when she’d arrived to spend time with her cousin. Now, suddenly, he was baiting her?
She stalked across the pub floor, looking like a hissing, spitting kitten trying to fluff itself up in size to appear threatening, and jerked open the door. Without waiting for him, she sailed through to the deck outside and continued toward the stairs. Joe stopped the pub door from slamming and caught up with her by the foot of the stairs, hearing a soft yelp as her bare feet touched the icy sidewalk.
Chilblains, his mother used to yell. You’ll get chilblains playing outside without your shoes on. And so she’d order him, his younger brother Luke, and the eighteen-month-old twins, Kerry and Kyle, inside their cramped Ballymun council flat. She’d chafe her warm, rough hands over their feet until they were all toasty and giggly and ready for some fruity brack, hot from the oven.
What would it feel like to rub MacKenna’s feet between his hands? He couldn’t hold back a low chuckle. Thank God his thoughts didn’t flash across his forehead like a neon sign, or she’d likely direct him to the nearest foot-fetish website. Only once his mind conjured up the image of rubbing MacKenna’s feet, it fast-forwarded to him running his hands over the silky-looking skin covering the rest of her body.
“Something funny you’d like to share with the class?” MacKenna faced him, fists on hips, the sea breeze whipping a lock of hair across her face.
“Private joke,” he said.
The pinched look returned to her face, and her gaze surreptitiously slid down the front of his coat to her feet, the attitude-drenched stance melting as she wrapped her arms around herself.
Joe’s ribs gave a little squeeze around his heart. While she was as aware as he of the unpleasant and awkward undercurrents that flowed between them, he wasn’t one for letting his arsehole flag fly unprovoked. And MacKenna’s alerting him to one of his patients’ discomfort wasn’t provocation. Didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure she’d rather be anywhere but standing two feet away from him.
“I was thinking of my mam and her obsession with chilblains,” he said. “If she were here, she’d be fussing like a hen and have you hauled back inside, where she’d have you drinking tea and smothered in wool blankets.”
“Oh.” MacKenna shot him a wary glance, as if she still didn’t quite believe he hadn’t been laughing at her. “That sounds surprisingly lovely.”
“Yeah?” Joe lifted a shall we walk? hand in the direction of the community hall. “Not so much so when you’re eight and trying to prove to your mates how tough you are by running barefoot through the streets of Ballymun.”
MacKenna padded along beside him, taking two steps to each of his in order to keep up. Her perfume curled around him, his nose suddenly able to differentiate between her and the tang of brine and chimney smoke wafting on the breeze. She smelled of something earthy but sweet, taking him back to a fifteen-year-old Joe and a stolen kiss in Poppintree Park. The first and last time he’d kissed a girl in the Green Isles, barely a week before his family immigrated to New Zealand.
“Do you miss it?” she asked. “Ireland, I mean.”
Hairs rose and rippled down his nape. He rubbed his neck with an impatient hand as they started up the slight slope of the road leading to the hall. “Sometimes. I grew up in a pretty rough part of north Dublin. We didn’t have two pennies to rub together when I was growing up. As a kid, I didn’t notice it so much; it was just home to me.”
“How old were you when you left?”
“Fifteen. And my brother Luke was eleven; the twins, Kerry and Kyle, were eight.”
And look at them, having an actual civil conversation.
“A big move,” she said. “Uprooting and moving your family to the other side of the world. But at least you had each other.”
Maybe he imagined it, but her words held an almost wistful tone.
MacKenna Jones was an only child. He’d gleaned as much over the years from snippets of conversation he’d had with Holly. Ah, well. As doolally as his younger brothers and sister drove him at times, he couldn’t imagine not having them do so.
His stride quickened, footsteps echoing along the deserted street. The skin across his shoulders had gone numb with the chill wind, and his ears ached. Anyone in his or her right mind would be tucked up warm inside this afternoon. Oban winters weren’t for the faint of heart.
He glanced down at MacKenna. Her shoulders hunched, she had her head tucked tortoise-like into his jacket, quick-stepping to remain at his side.
“Betsy clearly must’ve put a rocket under your arse to send you running from the hall in just that slip of a dress,” he said.
“I was worried, so I didn’t think. I just did what needed to be done.”
Invisible icicles bristled down his spinal cord. Almost the exact excuse she’d used with him in her bridal boutique so many years ago.
MacKenna stumbled, and he shot out a hand to grip her elbow, preventing her from face-planting into the sidewalk. She swore fit to rival Piper Harland—a former police officer now married to Due South’s manager, so that was saying something—and shook off his hand.
“I’m fine, thanks.”
She spoke through gritted teeth, as if losing the front ones would’ve been preferable to his touch.
Being the bigger person, Joe resisted serving up a generous portion of sarcasm and took the steps up to the community hall entrance two at a time. Though his mam would’ve boxed his ears, he shot through the doorway without pinning the heavy door open for MacKenna.
The rumble of conversation rolled out from the hall, louder and higher in pitch than the same sized crowd gathered in Due South earlier. Ah, to be back at the pub with the lads and a few scoops, whiling away a winter’s afternoon instead of walking into—
Joe shoved open the hall’s inner door, and seconds later, squeals of his name erupted at a level only the local dogs could hear. He raised a hand in a brief wave, dodging at least two outstretched plates of an odd-looking, gray-frosted cake. He spotted Betsy keeping court by the laden snack table and made a beeline for her—and stopped short. He squinted at the remaining portion of uncut cake on the table. Was that a gray…zombie penis?
“Yoo-hoo! Doctor Joe.”
Joe jerked his gaze away from the disturbing cake and back to Betsy Taylor who was planted on her plastic chair like a queen about to receive a commoner subject. She wasn’t clutching her chest—or showing signs of discomfort in her neck, arms, back, or stomach, where pain could show in a female heart attack victim. Her face was its usual too-much-foundation tone of pale orange with blotches of lighter color. No sign of excess sweating or a sickly gray hue, just the healthy though wattled skin of an eighty-something-year-old. Mrs. T. had threatened to sign him up for an online dating site as she’d done to his mate Ford if he ever revealed her true age.
Joe sat beside her, eyeing Betsy’s bejeweled hand resting on her knee. As long as it stayed on her knee, they were good. The widow Taylor had a habit of being a bit grabby with men under the age of fifty and especially toward Joe’s mates. Fortunately, Betsy came from the generation where doctors were considered demigods, and she kept her wandering hands to herself. Nevertheless, he took her fingers in his to check her skin wasn’t cold and clammy. Nope. Warm and dry and quite soft, thanks to the lavender moisturizer she constantly applied.
“Feeling a bit poorly, were we?”
Betsy batted her false eyelashes, one of which had started to peel off like an escaping spider. “Oh, dreadful, Dr. Whelan. But you mustn’t worry about me now. What about poor MacKenna?”
“She’s fine.” Joe’s gaze flicked to the hall entrance, but his view was blocked by
the collection of women nattering in the middle of the floor.
“Are you sure?” Betsy thumped her cane on the floor for emphasis. “She dashed out of here without her coat, and it’s cold enough to freeze a witch’s tit off outside. You’d best check on her first; she’ll catch her death.”
The general consensus, apparently.
Joe unzipped his backpack—the one his mates teasingly labeled Joe’s handbag—and removed his portable blood pressure monitor.
“I gave her my coat, Betsy. And it’s you I’m concerned about. Chest pains in a woman your age—”
Betsy waved a dismissing hand. “Pishposh. I’m feeling much better.”
“Did you seriously just pishposh me?” Joe unwrapped the Velcro pressure cuff with a long, loud rip. “After I hauled my arse all the way up here. You wouldn’t be crying wolf now, would you?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, young man,” she said. Then ruined her indignant act by shooting him a most wolfish smile. “Maybe I had a touch of indigestion from Denise’s penis cake.”
“You’ve a touch of something, for sure.” Joe slid the cuff onto Betsy’s upper arm and tightened it. He hooked his stethoscope out of his backpack and draped it around his neck. “I’m still going to check you out.”
He pumped up the cuff and listened to the healthy-as-a-horse thud of Betsy’s pulse.
“You can check me out anytime, dear,” she said as he released the cuff’s pressure. “A handsome Irishman such as yourself. Oh myyyy.”
“Opened myself up for that one, didn’t I?”
He peeled the cuff off her arm and placed it and the monitor back into his bag.
“You don’t open yourself up to anyone, Joe. That’s my worry.”
The sudden quaver in Betsy’s normal foghorn-powerful voice made him freeze, dangling his stethoscope over the backpack’s opening. Uncannily, she was right. But hell if he’d admit it to the interfering Mrs. T. He dropped the stethoscope into the bag then leaned over to wrap an arm around the woman’s bony shoulders. He gave her a gentle one-armed hug.
“Don’t you worry about me, my girl. Worry about the tests I’m going to run on you back at the medical center. Ones involving needles and uncomfortable things stuck to your boobs. Unless you’d like to confess what you’re really up to?”
Did he feel guilty playing the needle card on an elderly woman with an intense dislike of them? Nope. Joe gave her shoulder another squeeze then released her with his best don’t lie to the doctor smackdown stare.
Betsy’s mouth twisted, her gaze darting sideways. “I might’ve exaggerated the chest pains.”
Hah! He knew it. “Exaggerated, meaning there weren’t any?”
“Not a twinge,” she admitted. “I just thought that maybe you and the Jones girl…”
Her voice trailed off, leaving Joe to fill in the rather obvious blanks. The “funny when it was someone else, terrifying when it was him” side of Betsy Taylor was that she was an unrepentant matchmaker. And somehow she’d gotten Joe and MacKenna in her sights. Maybe it was all the wedding fever going around town, with MacKenna, as a bridal shop owner, infecting everyone, including Betsy, with the virus. But aside from being immune to that particular strain, the last person he’d ever end up with was—
“Oh, sweet baby Jesus!” Betsy hollered at his side, making him nearly jump out of his skin. “MacKenna’s bleeding!”
Chapter 2
The crowd parted around MacKenna as if Betsy were Moses wielding his staff, and the women, the Red Sea. For a woman her age, Betsy could move when necessary. She’d shot out of her seat and all but hooked MacKenna with her walking stick to prevent her from bolting.
Joe skimmed the length of MacKenna—frozen near the hall’s kitchen—and spotted a blood-speckled paper napkin wrapped awkwardly over the toes of her right foot.
“I’m fine.”
Joe heard her speak from halfway across the room.
“Just point me in the direction of the first aid kit,” MacKenna went on.
“First aid kit? Pfft.” Betsy blew a raspberry and locked her arm through MacKenna’s. “We’ve a doctor right here.”
MacKenna’s gaze shot arrow-straight to Joe. “I don’t need a doctor.”
Every line of her stick-up-the-arse posture conveyed resistance to engaging with him a second time. And if the pint-sized attitude wasn’t clear enough, the “fuck off” look in her pretty green eyes was.
Betsy glanced over her shoulder with a raised, what do I do? eyebrow. Shite. And he’d just left MacKenna outside without doing the gentlemanly thing and checking she was okay. He crooked his finger at Betsy, and she gave another wolflike grin.
Betsy tightened her grip and dragged her unwilling captive along by the elbow toward him. MacKenna limped across the floor, leaving a speckled trail of blood behind her. Betsy muscled the younger woman more with pure will than upper body strength into the chair she’d just vacated.
“Now, stop your arguing, and let Joe have a look,” Betsy said. “I’ll go remind those twittering fools in the kitchen where the first aid box is kept.”
“I really don’t need a doctor,” MacKenna said again. “It’s just a stubbed toe.”
“A stubbed toe can bring a grown man to his knees.” Joe crouched in front of her. He cupped her heel with one hand and peeled the blood-soaked paper napkin off her toes with the other.
MacKenna hissed, and her foot jerked against his palm—whether solely from pain or a reaction to his touch, he didn’t know.
The bleeding had slowed, pooling around the nail bed of her big toe. He reached for his backpack and dragged out the plastic container containing a basic first aid kit. Nothing in there that could treat an amputated limb in an emergency—but MacKenna wasn’t in imminent danger of losing a digit. She’d just have a toe that’d hurt like a bastard for a few days.
“Mac? Are you okay?”
Holly’s voice came from behind him. Joe glanced over his shoulder at Holly’s worried frown.
“It’s just a stubbed toe,” MacKenna said. “I need a Band-Aid, then I’ll be fine. Go on back to your party.”
“If you’re sure—?”
“High pain threshold here, remember? This is nothing compared to a sewing machine needle through your finger. Go—” MacKenna smiled and shooed her cousin away.
Holly blew MacKenna a kiss and was swallowed back into the circle of women.
“I don’t need your help putting a bandage on,” MacKenna said.
Her heel gave an experimental tug against his fingers, but he didn’t release it. Instead, he peeled open a sterile swab and gently cleaned the wound. There was a little grazing around the toe itself, but MacKenna was right. She didn’t require his assistance.
His gaze flicked up to her. She’d looked away from her cousin and now stared at him with a mixture of confusion and challenge.
Oh. Right. He was still cupping the smooth, warm skin of her foot, like Prince feckin’ Charming about to slide on a glass slipper.
Joe’s fingers sprang open, and he cleared his throat.
“One Band-Aid, coming up.” He rummaged in the plastic container, grabbing the first plastic strip he found. Which, with the luck of the Irish, happened to be a princess-branded one. Irony layered upon irony. At least the featured princess was the mermaid one and not Cinderella.
MacKenna took the Band-Aid and glanced at the printed covering, her mouth curling at one corner. One could almost mistake it for a smile.
“Ariel?” She tore off the wrapping. “Cute.”
“Girls seem to like them well enough.”
“Little girls, maybe.” She crossed one slender calf over the other, her nose crinkling as she peeled the protective covering back. “I always thought the mermaid was a chump, giving up her voice for some guy she’d only just met.”
“Not a big believer in love at first sight, then?”
MacKenna snorted, bending over to secure the bandage across her toe. Joe got an eye-watering, up-
close view of her breasts pressing against the low-cut front of her dress. He flinched away, disguising the movement by snapping shut the plastic lid of the first aid kit and shoving it into his backpack.
“Aren’t you in the happily-ever-after, saying-I-do business?” He zipped the bag closed and rocked back on his heels to see that MacKenna had straightened up and was now watching him through slitted eyes.
“I’m in the business of making sure the bride looks beautiful on her wedding day, and her day goes as perfectly as I can make it. The happily-ever-after part is all on her and her groom. Nothing to do with me.”
Nothing to do with her. And yet, nothing-to-do-with-her hadn’t stopped MacKenna from blowing up his happily ever after. Joe stood and swung his backpack onto his shoulder before he opened his big, fat gob and said something he couldn’t take back.
“I’d best be off before Betsy invents another ailment.”
Furrows deepened on MacKenna’s brow. “Are you sure she’s okay? It’s not a heart thing, then?”
Oh, it was a heart thing—Betsy’s sentimental and interfering heart was definitely involved. But Mrs. T. was lining up her Cupid’s bow at the wrong man.
“No, not a heart thing. Indigestion is more like it,” he said. “But I’ll make her come in for a full checkup next week.”
“Good.”
The next four beats of silence stretched between them, looping around his gut and cutting tight. Being at a lack for words was unfamiliar territory—and an insult to both his parental and cultural heritage. The Whelans were never silent unless afflicted with laryngitis, and even then Joe’s mam could communicate a homicidal intention to him and his siblings with just one glance. Yet, for some reason, Joe’s tongue remained glued to the roof of his mouth while empty, ridiculous phrases scurried through his brain.
Nice to see you again.
I’ll see you ’round.
See ya later.
Well, it’s been fun, but…
Saying I Do (Stewart Island Series Book 8) Page 2
